PE Horse Memorial repaired

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More than a year after Port Elizabeth’s well-known Horse Memorial was dismantled by EFF members, the statue is being repaired.

The memorial was vandalised by EFF members on 6 April 2015 as part of the party’s countrywide campaign to damage or destroy colonial and apartheid-era statues.

The soldier was removed for preservation purposes to an undisclosed location following the incident. Members of the NMMU Sculpture Collective say the soldier has been repaired and will be carefully placed back on the horse today.

The impressive bronze statue, dedicated to the thousands of horses that died on active duty in the Second Anglo-Boer War between 1899 and 1902, was erected in 1905. It depicts a soldier kneeling before his horse, holding a drinking bucket under the horse’s mouth.

Last year, a group of about 30 men dressed in red jumped over the spiked fence surrounding the statue, clambered onto the stone base and toppled the kneeling soldier before jumping into cars and racing away.

The EFF claimed responsibility minutes later.

The Horse Memorial stands on an inscribed stone plinth and its base forms a water trough.

The memorial, a provincial heritage site, was moved from its original position in Park Drive, where it was used as a drinking trough, to the intersection of Cape Road and Russell Road in the 1950s. ALSO READ: